Help Wanted

Honestly, I do my best to find value in each day.  Even if I fail, I try. 

This week has left me wanting to find something that adds value to my life but also some income.  Without belaboring the details of the past few years that you can find in the archives, I can tell you that we aren't thriving financially.  We are flat.  Our forced home remodel sucked our savings down to only emergency use.  By emergency, I mean we can only touch it if my husband were to lose his job.

I haven't been able to work for over three years.  I'm still not sure I am ready, but I think it's becoming necessary. 

Sure, I've stayed busy volunteering at church for the majority of the past three years, but volunteering doesn't pay bills.  It's so hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I haven't contributed to our income for over three years.

With our remodel, we ran our funds before the bathroom was done.  That has left us with a cracked/rusting tub, holes in the wall, rotten wood, leaking faucet, tiles popping off the wall and disgusting bleach speckled green carpet on the floor.  Most of that has remained tolerable and functional. 

The leaky faucet has caused the tiles to pop, the rotting wood and what looks to be the start of a mold problem.  Unfortunately, the growing hole in the tub is leaking water onto our furnace and heater in the basement.  My husband seems to remain calm about all of this, but I don't do so well.  Water leaking onto electrical and gas appliances seems to be dangerous.

Regardless, we finally agreed that the leaking tub could no longer be put off.  My husband is pretty handy to have around, but this job is just too much for him.  So, we had a friend come in, give us a quote which was more than reasonable and were able to see what we were facing.

It was beyond difficult for us to know we just didn't have the extra funds to take care of this problem.  It's a terrible position to be in and I hate it.  Not only that, but I feel extremely guilty.  Since I don't work, it could take months and months to save enough money to get the tub fixed.  Ugh!

So, I've spent some time looking at the Help Wanted ads the past few days.  You know, I didn't find a lot of jobs at all.  Most of what I saw were retail full-time or hard manual labor.  Not that I'm against hard manual labor, but I'm really not qualified for a variety of reasons.  I'm also not sure I can work full-time.

I found nothing suitable to even apply for.  Ideally, I would need to find something part-time, local, and without a lot of contact with strangers.  I know that may seem like I'm being too particular, but I think I have to if I want to hold a job for longer than a week.  When you have PTSD, a personality disorder and a three year gap in work experience, it doesn't make you that marketable. 

There has to be an answer.  I know it seems silly, but for reasons I don't want to go into I've prayed for two years that this bathroom would get finished.  For reasons difficult for anyone to understand, it's difficult for me to have it look so terrible.  I've prayed for short term jobs and a variety of other things and nothing has come.  Now that it's more urgent to get some of it done, I question why the unanswered prayers.

In fact, I've been passed over for low paying jobs.  My husband has been offered odd jobs that he has had to turn down, while I could have easily done them.  I'm frustrated.

I'm sure I will continue to search the ads, hoping to find something.  I hope it comes soon for both the financial part and for the added value in life.